The phrase "Christmas shopping" suggests Main Street lit with twinkling Christmas lights and populated by jolly friends and neighbors. The picture of a solitary shopper peering blearily at a computer screen doesn’t convey quite the same atmosphere of Christmas cheer.

Yet millions of people are doing their Christmas shopping that way this year. The Internet has opened up an entire world of retail opportunities, with seemingly limitless choices literally at a shopper’s fingertips. There are even computer programs that will remember your credit card number and delivery information so that you don’t have to fill in those same blanks every time.

What a speedy way to send money flying out of Cortez!

Small retail businesses may someday benefit greatly from the wide world of e-commerce; right now, though, Internet shopping favors large firms with large inventories. It makes much more sense for Cortez-area businesses to tailor their stock to local customers, with familiar desires and familiar spending patterns. They can expect a more predictable return on their investments that way. They’re probably not going to grow immensely and suddenly wealthy, but they’re also not going to incur all the expenses of trying to capitalize on a very nebulous market.

That means, though, that they can’t compete very well with the selection and excitement of cyber-shopping. Their regular customers still spend time on Main Street, but they also spend money in the privacy of their own homes, and those are dollars that donbenefit Cortez very much.

The arguments against shopping in Farmington hold equally true when one is talking about shopping in New York or New Zealand. Money spent over the Internet doesn’t support Cortez merchants who in turn support the Cortez community. It doesn’t fund local jobs and services. It doesn’t encourage local businesses to maintain varied inventories.

A workable mechanism for taxing Internet sales has not yet been perfected. Such a system might be very difficult to implement, especially considering Americans’ concerns about the privacy of their computer transactions. Unless and until a nationwide system of collecting Internet sales tax is developed, money that flows through such electronic channels has a measurably detrimental effect on the tax base of the City of Cortez. A person who only spends half as much in Cortez this Christmas as he did last year may walk on downtown sidewalks just as often, but he’s only contributing half as much support.